Gua shas and buccal fat removal surgeries, 10-step skincare regimens and collagen smoothies: today, and for decades, women have felt the need to pull out all the stops to fight aging. The anti-aging industry, an industry worth almost 65 billion dollars, is powered by the delusion that women lose value as they age. Many of us have watched the media discard older women, which leads us to increasingly worry about growing undesirable or irrelevant as our birthday candles accumulate.
On January 10th, the Golden Globes celebrated the key wins of two women over the age of 60: Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once) for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and Jennifer Coolidge (White Lotus) for Best Actress in a Limited Series. Both women have spoken out about the ageism they have faced in the past few decades of their careers. However, their successes prove a key point: older women have great value.
Hopefully, we will all be old women someday. I plan on tottering around until I’m at least 120 when my tired, 90 year-old-kids are begging me to just die already. You can catch me in 2123, crocheting sweaters for my hundred dogs and only eating mac and cheese. And it is essential to me that when I’m at that age, I am not viewed as any less worthy or valuable than any other member of society.
Jennifer Coolidge, a national treasure, has been making us giggle for years in Legally Blonde, A Cinderella Story and Glee (side-note: her and Ken Jeong are the ultimate power couple). And yet, for the past twenty years, she has not been regularly employed. We haven’t seen all that much from her until very recently. Michelle Yeoh experienced a similar issue, noting in her acceptance speech that “as the days, the years and the numbers get bigger, it seems like opportunities start to get smaller” for women.
Ageism regarding women in Hollywood (and the world in general) is, to be plain, sad. Older women have so much insight and value to contribute to society, and unless we force this anti-ageism ship forward, it will stall. Coolidge and Yeoh’s wins this award season show us that we are moving in the right direction, and they prove what we already know: we grow in value as we age. The more we learn and experience, the more wisdom we gain. The stopwatch on our value is not going to run out in ten to fifteen years. Our value will only increase, and our contributions will improve.
I’m looking forward to my sixties. I bet 60 year old me will be super silly and super smart. And until then, I’ll be on the couch watching Jennifer Coolidge learn the bend-and-snap.